DIGITAL SERVICE QUALITY, FINANCIAL LITERACY, AND TRUST ON CUSTOMER LOYALTY: CUSTOMER SATISFACTION AS MEDIATOR AT BRI UNIT

Abstract

The expansion of digital banking in Indonesia has shifted competitive pressure from product features toward the quality of digital touchpoints, the financial competence of users, and the trust customers place in their banks. Bank Rakyat Indonesia, through its mobile application BRImo and its branchless-banking arm AgenBRILink, sits at the centre of this shift, particularly in semi-urban regions such as Purwokerto where customers routinely combine appbased transactions with face-to-face agent transactions. This study examines how digital service quality (DSQ), digital financial literacy (DFL), and customer trust (CT) drive customer loyalty (CL) at the BRI Unit level, treating customer satisfaction (CS) as a mediating mechanism. A cross-sectional survey was administered in March-April 2026 to dualchannel BRI Unit customers in Purwokerto who actively use both BRImo and AgenBRILink. After screening and dataquality cleaning, 120 valid responses were analysed with partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLSSEM) using SmartPLS 4. The measurement model met the recommended thresholds for indicator reliability, internal consistency, convergent validity, and discriminant validity. Structural results show that digital service quality and customer trust each significantly increase satisfaction, while digital financial literacy does not; satisfaction in turn significantly increases loyalty and is the strongest path in the model. None of the antecedents exerts a significant direct effect on loyalty; only customer trust achieves a significant indirect effect through satisfaction. The model explains 55.4 percent of the variance in satisfaction and 37.1 percent of the variance in loyalty. The findings position customer satisfaction as the decisive gateway to loyalty in a saturated dual-channel digital market and offer concrete levers for BRI Unit managers seeking to retain customers.